Some business systems (a customer management system and the like) have, e.g., a function of outputting a result (output data) to a request (input data) by causing a plurality of processes to cooperate with each other and executing the processes. In the business system described above, each process unit executes the process when the process unit receives the result of the process executed by the prior process unit. Subsequently, each process unit transmits the process result of its process to the predetermined next process unit. With this, it becomes possible for the individual process units to execute the processes while cooperating with each other (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-105420).